Abstract
Christian life in mid-fifteenth-century England was comfortable.1 Wool-merchants and other nouveaux riches led the way in building and re-building churches across the beam of England and leaving their signatures on them; a thirsty market for works of conventional personal piety was about to give William Caxton his chance; prelates, landowners and urban oligarchs endowed schools and (Cambridge) colleges in a steadily increasing flow; the even tenor of monastic life was punctuated here and there by some lively rioting from the local peasants and flare-ups of domestic disharmony, but nothing serious and nothing new. In an increasing number of towns craft-guilds were getting together to organise joint mystery plays. Rural parishes organised ales, Robin Hood plays and teenage Hoke-days as fund-raisers and splashed lively, sometimes ghoulish, wall-paintings along the naves of their churches. Tithes were generally paid without much fuss, and the parish clergy were usually regarded as good neighbours by their flocks. The church courts concerned themselves with the moral failings and marital problems of the layfolk only as and when obliged to by outrage amongst those immediately involved, their kin or their neighbours. The bishops in the mid-fifteenth century were as pastoral and unpolitical a collection as might ever have been mustered in medieval England, albeit as avaricious as usual.
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Notes and References
See Bibliography for important contextual works and guides to recent writings. I have minimised references to manuscript sources in this chapter, but wish to thank the Borthwick Institute, York, for access to its manuscripts and microfilms.
R. L. Storey, ‘Episcopal King-makers in the Fifteenth-century’, in R. B. Dobson (ed.), The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 82–98,
and cf. the important comments of P. Heath, Church and Realm, 1272–1461 (1988), pp. 338–9.
F. R. H. Du Boulay (ed.), Registrum Thome Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc, 1957), pp. XXXII–VI, 102–7; cf. Heath, Church and Realm, 345–8: ‘The Lancastrian dynasty’s fall was neither impeded nor accelerated by the clergy and their interests’.
C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘The Inauguration Ceremonies of the Yorkist Kings and their Title to the Throne’, TRHS, 4th ser., 5 (1948), 51–73;
J. W. McKenna, ‘The Coronation Oil of the Yorkist Kings’, EHR, 82 (1967), 102–4;
A. F. Sutton and P. W. Hammond (eds), The Coronation of Richard III (Gloucester, 1983), pp. 1–9. If Cardinal Bourgchier was indeed ‘reluctant’ to crown Richard III in 1483 (Mancini, 122) — and indeed he personally had much recently to be reluctant about, shamefaced being the more exact word — he showed it at most by turning down a free lunch for the first and only time in his life, and even then only by pleading elderly fatigue, and by ‘retiring’ forthwith to his home at Knole in Kent, a gesture made less compelling by the fact that he had been largely ‘retired’ there for several years already; see Du Boulay, Reg. Bourgchier, 530–57, for his recent itinerary.
C. S. L Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton, the Holy See and the Accession of Henry VII’, EHR LII (1987), 2–30, esp. 14–15.
For the significant hypothesis that Henry VII was inspired by continental examples during his exile to renew the religious authority and initiative of kingship, see A. Goodman, ‘Henry VII and Christian Renewal’, in K. Robbins (ed.), Religion and Humanism (Oxford, 1981), pp. 115–25.
R. Lovatt, ‘A Collector of Apocryphal Anecdotes: John Blacman Revisited’, in A.J. Pollard (ed.), Property and Politics (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 172–97;
and ‘John Blacman: Biographer of Henry VI’, in R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1981), pp. 415–44.
R. N. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism (Cambridge, 1979), esp. pp. 109–12 (Nicholas Fakenham);
see also M. Harvey, Solutions to the Schism: A Study of some English Attitudes, 1378 to 1409 (St Ottilien, 1983).
A. B. Emden, Biographical Dictionary of the University of Oxford to 1500 (Oxford, 1957), III, p. 1756, for John Bale’s list of his works.
R. L. Storey, ‘The Universities during the Wars of the Roses’, in D. Williams (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 315–28;
and ‘University and Government, 1430–1500’, in J. I. Catto and R. Evans (eds), History of the University of Oxford, II: Late Medieval Oxford (Oxford, 1992), pp. 719–38.
Gregory, 158. Ive had his compensation after the change of dynasty, receiving the mastership of Whittington hospital, the most fashionable pulpit in London.
C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘Inauguration Ceremonies’, 55–6 (Neville); for the problem over three eminent ‘Dr Goddards’ at this time, see M. A. Hicks, Clarence (rev. edn, Bangor, 1992), p. 137; for Shaa, see Mancini, pp. 94, 128–9 and refs, and Great Chronicle, 231–2.
Warkworth, 12. The chronicler was well-liked by William Grey, bishop of Ely, who was in sanctuary at this time as Edward IV’s chancellor, and had been with him at least once in London in this crisis-year (Cambridge UL: Reg. William Grey (Ely) fo. 92).
S. B. Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 167–91. Cf. Mancini, p. 83 for Gloucester’s development of much the same theme before a nervous royal council. Russell’s ‘laborious’ style is criticised by Pronay and Cox (Crowland, 88) who perhaps have a low boredom threshold. The bishop’s itinerary from his register (Lincoln DRO), if sometimes difficult to establish, suggests a chancellor with an unusual degree of opportunity to spend time in his diocese.
J. M. George Jnr, ‘The English Episcopate and the Crown, 1437–1450’ (Columbia University Ph.D. thesis, 1976), is excellent; cf. L. R. Betcherman, ‘The Making of Bishops in the Lancastrian Period’, Speculum, 41 (1966), 413–8;
J. T. Rosenthal, ‘The Training of an Elite Group: English Bishops in the Fifteenth Century’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 60, part 5 (1970), esp. p. 49;
R. G. Davies, ‘The Attendance of the Episcopate in English Parliaments, 1376–1461’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 129, part 1 (1985), 48–9, 66–8.
R. A. Griffiths, ‘The King’s Council and the First Protectorate of the Duke of York, 1450–1454’, EHR, 99 (1984), 318, with some uncharacteristic and unjustified spleen towards the bishops’ pleas of diocesan conscience: at least four had a sound record to plead.
E. g. T. Wright (ed.), Political Poems and Songs, II (RS, 1861), pp. 232–4; Rot Parl, V, 216–7; T. Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatum, pp. 193–4.
R.J. Knecht, ‘The Episcopate and the Wars of the Roses’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 6 (1957–8), 117; R. G. Davies, ‘The Episcopate and the Readeption of Henry VI’ (forthcoming).
Cf. R. M. Haines, ‘Aspects of the Episcopate of John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester, 1444–1476’, JEccH, 19 (1968), 11–40;
and ‘The Practice and Problems of a fifteenth-century English Bishop: the Episcopate of William Gray’, Mediaeval Studies, 34 (1972), pp. 435–45. The Canterbury and York Society has published few episcopal registers from this period: some are very fine.
G. I. Keir, ‘The Ecclesiastical career of George Neville, 1432–1476’ (University of Oxford B. Litt. thesis, 1970), is superb; see also Emden, Oxford, II, pp. 1347–9; R. B. Dobson, ‘Richard III and the Church of York’, in R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (eds), Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1986), pp. 133–5.
Warkworth, 24–6. Borthwick Institute, York: Reg. G. Neville, vol. II, leaves some doubt whether, for all his early death, his health really was ruined by imprisonment. In 1475, for example, (fo. 8r-v) he travelled from Bisham to Westminster in June and thence to Calais in August and September, back to Westminster, to Bisham for Christmas, then back to Westminster once more. His putative appearance in Gloucester in May 1474 requires a second opinion.
R. J. Knecht, ‘Episcopate’, 109–31.
See Du Boulay Reg. Bourgchier, vii–xxiii; C. L. Scofield, Edward the Fourth, 2 vols (1923), I, p. 23, naturally saw through him.
A. J. Pollard, North-East England during the Wars of the Roses (Oxford, 1990), pp. 146–9, 267–8, 294–7, 329–31; and, ‘St Cuthbert and the Hog’, in Kings and Nobles, 114–5; Knecht, ‘Episcopate’, 115–6.
There is no good modern biography, but C. S. L. Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton’, is excellent for the period in hand.
Knecht, ‘Episcopate’, covers most of what follows.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Ms. 170, p. 216 (no. 167).
J. H. Parry and A. T. Bannister (eds), Registrum Johannis Stanbury (Canterbury and York Soc, 1919), pp. 55–7.
J. le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541, XI: Welsh Dioceses, ed. B. Jones (1965), pp. 38–9, 55; Emden, Oxford, I, pp. 191, 557.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Ms. 170, pp. 229–33 (nos. 184, 185, 187). None the less, Chedworth remained active in his last years. That he was at Oxford throughout the period of the Lincolnshire rebellion is interesting but unremarkable, because he was often there for long stays. His register (Lincoln DRO) shows that he did make a trip from Oxford to London and back in August 1470 and was in London constantly (apart from a Christmas trip home) from October 1470 to July 1471, possibly under a cloud in the last weeks.
A. B. Hinds (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Milan (1912), pp. 164–5, 169.
E. E. Barker (ed.), Reg. T. Rotherham (York), I (Canterbury and York Soc, 1976), p. 73.
D. Hay, Polydore Vergil (Oxford, 1952), pp. 79–168.
A. R. Myers, ‘The Captivity of a Royal Witch’, BfRL, 24 (1940), 263–84, and 26, 82–100 (Joan of Navarre);
R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Trial of Eleanor Cobham’, BJRL, 51 (1969), pp. 381–99;
I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford, 1991), p. 98.
Rot Parl, W, p. 241.
Hicks, Clarence, 133–40.
J. M. Thielmann, ‘Political Canonization and Political Symbolism in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 29 (1990), 241–66;
J. R. Bray, ‘Concepts of Sainthood in Fourteenth-century England’, BJRL, 66(ii) (1984), esp. pp. 51–65.
P. McNiven, ‘Rebellion, Sedition and the Legend of Richard II’s Survival in the Reigns of Henry IV and Henry V’, BJRL, 76 (1994), 93–117, esp. pp. 111–12, 115.
J. W. McKenna, ‘Popular Canonization and Political Propaganda: the Cult of Archbishop Scrope’, Speculum, 45 (1970), 608–23.
J. W. McKenna, ‘Piety and Propaganda: the Cult of Henry VI’, in B. Rowland (ed.), Chaucer and Middle English Studies (1974), pp. 72–88.
Dobson, ‘Richard III and the Church of York’, 130–1.
A. Payne, ‘The Salisbury Roll of Arms of c.1463’, in D. Williams (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 187 n. 3, lists the various accounts.
Scofield, Edward IV, I, 268–9; II, 167–8.
Rot Parl, V, pp. 182–3.
G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss (eds), ‘John Benet’s Chronicle for the Year 1400 to 1462’, in Camden Miscellany, XXIX (Camden, 1972), p. 201; Gregory, 193.
P. A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York (Oxford, 1988), pp. 110–12.
C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans, 1455’, BIHR, 33 (1960), 23, 28.
V. Davis, William Waynflete (Woodbridge, 1994);
and ‘William Waynflete and the Wars of the Roses’, Southern History, 11 (1989), 1–22. Dr Davis’s view of her bishop is very different.
English Chronicle, 77 (actually taken from the Brut at this point); Davis, ‘William Waynflete’, 3; J. Gairdner (ed.), Paston Letters, 6 vols (1904), III, p. 127 (no. 366, John Bocking to Sir John Fastolf, 15 March 1458) — ‘my lord of Canterbury takith grete peyne up on hym daily’.
Rot Parl, V, 281; Du Bouley, Reg. Bourgchier, 78–93; English Chronicle, 94.
For detail of what follows, H. T. Riley (ed.), Registrum Abbatiae Johannis Whethamstede Abbati Monasterii Sancti Albani, 2 vols (RS, 1872–3), I, pp. 372–3;
J. Gairdner (ed.), Three Fifteenth-century Chronicles (Camden Society, New Series, XXVIII, 1880), p. 153;
Knecht, ‘Episcopate’, 112 and n. 25; Scofield, Edward IV, I, pp. 87–8; R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (1981), pp. 863–9.
G. E. Caspary, ‘The Deposition of Richard II and the Canon Law’, in S. Kuttner and J. J. Ryan (eds), Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Washington DC, 1965), pp. 189–201.
C. Head, ‘Pope Pius II and the Wars of the Roses’, Archivum Historiae Pontifciae, 8 (1970), 139–78;
M. Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 1417–64 (Manchester, 1993), pp. 193–206.
Hicks, Clarence, 44–5. Archbishop Neville was, of course, at the centre of the intrigue. Less predictably, Bishop Thomas Kemp of London, the late cardinal’s nephew, lent personal support, as to much else in the Readeption period to come (Guildhall Library, London: Reg. T. Kempfos. 117v–8v).
Rot Parl, VI, 100–1; Crowland, 133.
Crowland, 174–5.
Rot Parl, VI, 240; Crowland, 168–71, ‘even though that lay court was not empowered to determine on it … nevertheless it presumed to do so and did so on account of the great fear’. See M. O’Regan, ‘The Precontract and its Effect on the Succession in 1483’, and A. Sutton, ‘Richard Ill’s ‘tytylle and right’: A New Discovery’, in J. Petrie (ed.), Richard III: Crown and People (Gloucester, 1985), pp. 54–5, 59–60.
A. Goodman, John of Gaunt (1992), pp. 73–4;
L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (eds), Westminster Chronicle (Oxford, 1982), pp. 310–13, 324–7 (Tresilian).
J. S. Roskell, ‘Sir William Oldhall’, in his Parliament and Politics in Medieval England, II (1981), p. 192.
R. A. Griffiths, ‘Local Rivalries and National Politics’, Speculum, 43 (1968), 620 and n. 158;
T. B. Pugh, ‘Richard, Duke of York, and the Rebellion of Henry Holand, Duke of Exeter, in May 1454’, HR, 63 (1990), 256.
Scofield, Edward TV, I, 541. A. L. Bannister (ed.), Reg. T. Milling (Hereford) (Canterbury and York Soc, 1920), esp. p. 33, tracks the abbot’s continuing service and affection.
Warkworth, 20; Reg. W. Grey, fo. 82v; Knecht, ‘Episcopate’, 117–8; see also Davies, ‘Episcopate and Readeption’.
Arrivall, 22.
Scofield, Edward IV, I, 587–8; Warkworth, 18–19, ‘whiche uppone trust of the kynges pardone yeven in the same chirche the Saturday, abode their stille, where thei myght have gone and savyd ther lyves’; Arrivall, 30–1, ‘he gave [many of the rebels] his fre pardon, albe it there ne was, ne had nat at any tyme bene grauntyd, any fraunchise to that place for ony offenders agaynst ther prince … ’, but thereafter executed other offenders whom he had not pardoned.
The best summary is in R. E. Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 116–7; Mancini, 88–9; Great Chronicle, 231; Crowland, 158–9.
J. A. F. Thomson, ‘Bishop Lionel Woodville and Richard III’, BIHR, 59 (1986), 1305;
see also, Storey, ‘University and Government’, 116–7; R. C. Hairsine, ‘Oxford University and the Life and Legend of Richard III’, in Petrie, Richard III, 315–16; R. E. Horrox and P. W. Hammond (eds), BL Harley 433 (Gloucester, 1980) II, pp. 59, 92, 177, III, pp. 1, 123–4; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476–85; p. 387.
P. I. Kaufman, ‘Henry VII and Sanctuary’, Church History, 53 (1984), 469 and n. 16;
C. H. Williams, ‘The Rebellion of Humphrey Stafford in 1486’, EHR, 43 (1928), 181–9.
H. C. Maxwell-Lyte (ed.), Reg. Robert Stillington (Somerset Rec. Soc, 52, 1937), pp. xi–xii; W. E. Hampton, ‘The Later Career of Robert Stillington’, in Petrie, Richard III, 161–5.
Succinct rehearsals are to be found in Storey, ‘University and Government’, 738–40; Hairsine, ‘Oxford University’, 320–3; and Maxwell-Lyte, Reg. Stillington, xii–xiii.
Kaufman, ‘Henry VII and Sanctuary’, 465–76; R. J. Rodes, Lay Authority and Reformation in the English Church (Notre Dame, 1982), pp. 32–3.
J. A. F. Thomson, ‘“The Well of Grace”: Englishmen and Rome in the Fifteenth Century’, in R. B. Dobson (ed.), Church, Politics and Patronage (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 99–114.
F. R. H. Du Boulay, ‘The Fifteenth Century’, in C. H. Lawrence (ed.), The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London, 1965), pp. 195–242; Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy;
J. A. F. Thomson, Popes and Princes, 1417–1517 (1980); Heath, Church and Realm, 293–6, 305–8; Swanson, Church and Society, 11–16;
W. E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327–1534 (Cambridge Ma., 1962), pp. 133–52;
A. N. E. D. Schofield, ‘England and the Council of Basel’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 5(i) (1973), pp. 1–117.
Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 171–206; Lunt, Financial Relations, 133–53. See also A. McHardy, ‘Clerical Taxation in Fifteenth-century England: the Clergy as Agents of the Crown’, in Dobson, Church, Politics and Patronage, 168–92, and Heath, Church and Realm, 303–5, 336–7, for illustrations of the thin, but consistent, grants of taxation to both the rival dynasties.
Head, ‘Pius II’, passim; Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 193–206.
Storey, ‘University and Government’, 721–34.
du Boulay, Reg. Bourgchier, xxii; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 170 (Letterbook of N. Collys), pp. 217, 219, 220.
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Davies, R.G. (1995). The Church and the Wars of the Roses. In: Pollard, A.J. (eds) The Wars of the Roses. Problems in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24130-9_7
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